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varroa mite question

I was inspecting one of my hives today and found some varroa mites on the larva and some bees.. Im planning on treating them with powder sugar and was looking for any other helpful information that i might do. After treating them should they be 100% free from varroa mites? Thanks for your help!!

Re: varroa mite question

I've had decent results from treating with powdered sugar, but they aren't going to be 100% mite free. It will help if you have screened bottom boards for the mites to fall through after the bees start grooming themselves after the powdered sugar treatment. Also, you should treat them again 10 days after the initial dusting to hit the mites with their breeding cycle.

Re: varroa mite question

Make a 1:1 mix of sugar water and add thymol. I have a recipe for this I can get you if you haven't seen one already. Place in a spray bottle, pull each frame and mist them. The thymol will kill the mites on contact. The bees will clean it off themselves. Do a second time in two weeks to hit those mites in closed cells. You should get pretty good results and rid a very large portion of the mites if not all.

Re: varroa mite question

Originally Posted by alpha6

Make a 1:1 mix of sugar water and add thymol. I have a recipe for this I can get you if you haven't seen one already. Place in a spray bottle, pull each frame and mist them. The thymol will kill the mites on contact. The bees will clean it off themselves. Do a second time in two weeks to hit those mites in closed cells. You should get pretty good results and rid a very large portion of the mites if not all.

Alpha, do you have any links, data on that? never heard of mixing with water for direct application?? intersting possibilities though.

Re: varroa mite question

Welcome back alpha6,

Powdered sugar is what we use, you need to do mite counts because if you have a high mite load hitting them with powdered sugar once won't help.
If mite counts are high, & powdered sugar is you're treatment of choice. It has to be done 2-3 times per week for 3 weeks in order to do an effective job of lowering the total mite population. That's a full brood cycle.

Re: varroa mite question

Thanks Dan...yeah...lots happened in the last 6 months...but back to normal...well something close to that anyway.

gmcharlie. The formula I use will knock them down real quick. The secondary benifit is that what the bees take thy feed to the young larve and if mites emarge from closed cells and feed on those larve the thymol in their system retards the reproductive cycle of the mites to finish off that cycle. I referenced a couple of studies a long time ago...have to go back and see if I can find them. I have used this with my bees with very good sucess. I will post the recipes later as they are on my home computer.

Re: varroa mite question

Here are the EO recipes that I use. For those of you who have seen these before you will note that I now use honey to mix my EO's as I found that it allows the mixture into sugar water to work very well with little seperation.

In a 5 gallon bucket pour in one gallon of very hot water (not boiling). In one cup of honey (I like to warm it up in a hot water bath before use) Add your lemongrass and spearmint oil (and thyme oil if using for mites) to the honey and mix well. Let stand. Next, add two gallons of tap water. Next, start adding your bags of sugar. As you are adding sugar and it starts to mix, pour in your honey EO Oil mix to ensure a good blend. Add a couple of bags and mix then add more. If you try and add too much at once it can burn out your mixer. Keep mixing until all the sugar is mixed well into the solution. You should have about 4- 4.5 gallons of feed ready to go.
(For mite control misting) Get a garden sprayer. Use one that has not been used before as you do not want chemicals in your feed. I label the one I use “Bee Feed” so it doesn’t get confused with anything. Pour in your mix and pressure up your sprayer. I use the fine mist setting. This allows you to mist a frame in one or at most two sweeps and doesn’t soak the frame or bees but gives it a nice even complete coating. Place into your hive and move to the next frame.
Lastly, I run two of these feeds with thyme and then just run them with lemongrass and spearmint. Towards the end of Nov. I will feed one more time with thyme. No special reason that I do this but experimenting around I found this works best for the bees. My mite counts since starting this method have been very low to zero.
Alternate Liquid Feed (makes up a smaller batch)
2qts. of water
2qts. of sugar
12 drops of thyme oil
28 drops of lemongrass oil
28 drops of spearmint oil
½ cup of honey

Re: varroa mite question

Re: varroa mite question

Originally Posted by alpha6

Here are the EO recipes that I use. For those of you who have seen these before you will note that I now use honey to mix my EO's as I found that it allows the mixture into sugar water to work very well with little seperation.

In a 5 gallon bucket pour in one gallon of very hot water (not boiling). In one cup of honey (I like to warm it up in a hot water bath before use) Add your lemongrass and spearmint oil (and thyme oil if using for mites) to the honey and mix well. Let stand. Next, add two gallons of tap water. Next, start adding your bags of sugar. As you are adding sugar and it starts to mix, pour in your honey EO Oil mix to ensure a good blend. Add a couple of bags and mix then add more. If you try and add too much at once it can burn out your mixer. Keep mixing until all the sugar is mixed well into the solution. You should have about 4- 4.5 gallons of feed ready to go.
(For mite control misting) Get a garden sprayer. Use one that has not been used before as you do not want chemicals in your feed. I label the one I use “Bee Feed” so it doesn’t get confused with anything. Pour in your mix and pressure up your sprayer. I use the fine mist setting. This allows you to mist a frame in one or at most two sweeps and doesn’t soak the frame or bees but gives it a nice even complete coating. Place into your hive and move to the next frame.
Lastly, I run two of these feeds with thyme and then just run them with lemongrass and spearmint. Towards the end of Nov. I will feed one more time with thyme. No special reason that I do this but experimenting around I found this works best for the bees. My mite counts since starting this method have been very low to zero.
Alternate Liquid Feed (makes up a smaller batch)
2qts. of water
2qts. of sugar
12 drops of thyme oil
28 drops of lemongrass oil
28 drops of spearmint oil
½ cup of honey

Re: varroa mite question

If you're sugar dusting because you want to be as "chemical-free" as possible, then a second method of varroa control, which I have found effective as a complement to sugaring, is drone trapping. Give the queen a shallow frame of drawn drone foundation to lay in. Drone larvae are highly attractive to adult mites. As soon as the larvae are capped remove the frame and either burn it or recycle it via the freezer (kills varroa and pupae) and chickens (uncap and eat contents, turn the protein into eggs).